


Right Here

by windandthestars



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s02e05 News Night with Will McAvoy, F/M, Minor Character Death, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-20 18:49:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17627693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windandthestars/pseuds/windandthestars
Summary: He sighs and looks at her. She’d known. She’d known for some time now, had inferred and assumed for even longer. They must have been on the air then, she must have finished the broadcast knowing, dreading.“You met him.” She says softly.“He was a great guy.” He replies just as quietly.





	Right Here

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to lilacmermaid for the prompt.

“Mac.” He says into the static. She’s probably in a bit of a rush, fixing something, waiting in the hall to remind him of some inane detail, but the fact she’s managed to ditch her headset before the lights have gone down bugs him in a way it normally doesn’t. It’s been a long week and a chaotic broadcast so he sighs and tries to let it go, grabbing his computer and glancing only briefly at the control room as he passes on the way to Mac’s office.

“Mac.” She looks up but she isn’t looking at him, not really. He recognizes that look, the one that has crisis management written all over it so he shuts up and lets her get back to work. Only she isn’t working, she’s aimless in an almost imperceptible way. It’s task one and then task two, but every movement is intentional, focused on: one set of papers, then another, there’s no room for thought.

“It’s Friday.” He lays his hand over the stack of papers she’s reaching for. “Leave that for Monday.”

She pulls her hand back and picks up another pile as he sighs internally.

“I’ll be back in a minute.” Don’t go anywhere he doesn’t say because she’s not going to ask him why, she’s not going to say anything so he heads to his office to grab his clothes and his bag, his jacket shrugged on as he stands back in the door to her office.

“Let’s go.” She looks up at him again, more aware of his presence this time, a tiny furrow in her brow. For a moment he thinks she might argue but when he picks up her jacket she walks over and takes it, slips it on while he collects the rest of her things.

“Cab?” He asks when they make it down to the street. It’s not as cold as it had been that morning, but he knows she’s no more of a fan of this weather than he is. Ten minutes outside wouldn’t do any damage but he’s still a bit surprised when she starts up the block without so much as a glance in his direction.

“All right.” He agrees with himself as they cross the street. not expecting but hoping for a smile, but it doesn’t seem as if she’s heard him. “Do you have your keys?”

“Yeah.” It’s the first thing she’s said to him but it seems to be an automatic response because she stops to check before nodding and setting off again.

“She knows not to text me during the show.” Key in the lock, Mac sounds aggravated and he hopes maybe he’s misread the entire situation, after all he’s the one who’s here and not Jim, Jim who’s he’s pretty sure has seen Mac through worse crises than this.

“She fucking knows.” Mac reiterates quietly throwing her coat onto the couch as he sets her stuff on the kitchen counter. She’s left her heels on but he toes off his shoes not wanting to track mud into the apartment.

“I have to leave for the airport in less than five hours.” It’s not a realization, this isn’t new, but there’s something else there too, a note of panic.

“Where—” He doesn’t finish asking. He doesn’t want to fill the room with the sound of his voice not when she’s as quiet as she is, not when the anger he’d expected seems to be swallowed up somewhere inside her. She’s angry but not in a way she can externalize and he doesn’t know what to do about that, not when he’s never seen her like this.

“Hell if I know.” Although she does know. He can see it in the set of her shoulders, the way she shifts so she doesn’t have to look at him. It’s not a conscious thing, whatever she’s thinking about has nothing to do with him. It’s unguarded, she’s unguarded, in a way he hasn’t seen in years and he’s surprised by the ache in his chest, the raw need he feels to fix it, it whatever it is, and to fix them, somehow, because it’s been eating at him more than he’d like to admit, the way he can’t stop hurting her, the way she keeps hurting. He doesn’t want that for her.

“She left me a voicemail.” She offers after a moment’s hesitation and he can see that’s what’s been bothering her, that’s what she’s been mulling over.

“You haven’t checked it?”

She shakes her head and looks at him, eyes wide and sad and he feels the bottom of his stomach drop a bit.

“I think my dad—” she stops and shakes her head again. “I think— The flight leaves at five. The dry cleaners isn’t open until seven. My black dress—”

“Do you have the flight information?”

“She bought,” Mac fumbles with her phone and then holds it out to him.

Middle seat. Economy. Will can’t help but snort. “Can I get you a better seat?”

“On the flight?” Mac frowns at him for a second trying to follow along and then shrugs.

“Checked bag?” That too seems to confuse her so he nods. “Why don’t you start packing and I’ll get this sorted out.”

*

It takes him longer than he’d like to get Mac upgraded to first class with a couple of checked bags and a meal he picks at random knowing there’s a good chance she’ll hardly touch it. He gets that sorted out then peeks in to see how the packing is going.

It’s a mess, which is what he’d expected, but it’s not the organized chaos he’s used to seeing from her so he steps over and starts folding the clothes she’s left scattered, listening to her sort through her makeup and other hard plastic bits in the bathroom.

“Oh.” She says when she reappears and he shrugs. He has everything folded, and sorted, ready to be slipped into whatever luggage she settles on, blazers folded around blouses and skirts to keep them from wrinkling, shoes put back in their dust bags, leggings and t-shirts, pajamas rolled up and set beside a stack of socks.

“Any idea what else you’ll need?” He’s thinking weather but he realizes when she replies she hasn’t even considered that. Her concerns are more immediate, less trivial. She could pick up an umbrella or a jacket if she needed one.

“I don’t know.” She’s hesitant picking up her phone, toying with it. “She sent me a text saying she emailed me the flight information, but she didn’t say what,” She trails off and glances at him with a look of longing that sticks his feet to the floor as the realization sinks in more fully.

Because she wouldn’t. That’s not the sort of thing you put in a text. Whatever was sending Mac across the ocean on short notice, that wasn’t the sort of thing you tacked on to the end of a sentence.

She’s packed, two bags by the door to her bedroom, but she still doesn’t know why, still seems content not to know for sure, even if they both have a good idea what sort of crisis this is.

“Do you want me to stay?”

For a minute he thinks she’s going to say no, that he’s done enough but then she nods with a quiet yes and he forces himself to smile, trying to reassure her that he doesn’t mind.

Task complete she’d been restless a moment before, but her nervous energy grows even as she moves, pacing a bit before she stops to shove her phone into his hands. “Could you? Please.” She tacks on quietly glancing up at him.

“Yeah,” he says even though, no, even though uhh, both feel like better answers.

“Just don’t,” she says and he stops to wait for further instructions even though she doesn’t seem to know what to say. “Don’t say. I don’t want— I can’t.” She sighs shakily. “I don’t want to hear, please.”

“OK.” He nods and then clicks through the menu on her phone before he can change his mind.

The message is short. “Mom just called. Dad died. I know you’re busy. I’m getting you a seat on the first flight out tomorrow. I’ll email you the details.”

That was it, one two, three, just the facts, the bare bones. It hardly counted as an outline, there was no sense of past or future events, no sense of the emotion any of them caused but it’s enough for him to know why he’s the one that’s here and Jim’s not, why Mac hadn’t asked him to leave.

He sighs and looks at her. She’d known. She’d known for some time now, had inferred and assumed for even longer. They must have been on the air then, she must have finished the broadcast knowing, dreading.

“You met him.” She says softly.

“He was a great guy.” He replies just as quietly.

Was, he sees the way she recoils from the word. She swallows and presses her eyes shut for a second as he waits, but there isn’t anything else just a barely perceptible nod.

“I’ll stay until you have to leave.” He promises.

“You have to—”

“It’s Friday night.” He reminds her. “I can catch a couple of extra hours later. Do you want coffee?”

“Water maybe.” She doesn’t sound sure, but she’s trying to hold on to some sense of normality he knows. Things are shifting under her feet and she’s trying to deal with that without falling apart although he thinks she could, thinks she should just a little.

She wasn’t one to bottle things up, not the way he did, so she was all right, she wasn’t devastated, but she was more upset than she was letting on.

“It’s OK if you,” he doesn’t specify what exactly. He’s not asking for a performative response, but he doesn’t want her to feel like she can’t trust him enough to let her guard down because that’s what she needs right now, more than his company. She needs his understanding. It’s the gamble she’d taken inviting him here, but that doesn’t seem to have occurred to her. She’d needed him and she’d asked and he’s trying to live up to that.

“I can’t.” She confesses softly, sitting uncertainly beside where he’d settled on the couch while she’d paced. “It’s a crisis and I need to...”

She trails off and he nods. “You want a hug?”

“You’ll have to let go.”

“That’s OK.” He assures her then looks away for a second when he sees her hesitate over the words, _is it?_

“I—” she says but she lets him wrap his arms around her, lets him hold her until she’s willing to move closer, lean to press her face into his shoulder.

“It’s going to be OK.” He promises into her hair as a minute turns into two and then three and he stops counting. “It might not be right now, or tomorrow, but it will be.”

“It always,” she says and then doesn’t finish. “I don’t know how to,” she stops with a frustrated sigh.

“Hard doesn’t mean impossible.” He reminds her softly as she turns her head to rest her ear against his chest, more comfortable there than he’d expected her to be.

“It’s going to be a long time.”

“Yeah.” He agrees still quiet, feeling hushed by the lull they’ve created. “If you need to talk.”

She’s reached across him to pick at something on the arm of the couch as she considers his offer. “You sure?” 

“Yeah.”

“I tend to call people in the middle of the night.”

“I’m sure.” He pauses, smiles, waits a moment and then breathes out an airy chuckle. “How is that any different than what you do now?”

“I’m not that bad.” She insists, but the defensiveness is for show. He hadn’t missed the smile that had fleetingly flickered across her face.

“I don’t mind. Now or whenever.”

“Thank you.” She pulls her hand back from the couch to rest it on his knee, considering, “for being here.”

“Mac.” He says softly and then waits a moment deciding. “I’m glad I’m here.”

“You don’t mind—”

“I don’t mind staying.” He assures her. “I’ll help you get your bags to the airport too, if you want.”

“Yeah,” she considers that. “OK, just,” she pauses for a moment, “just stay right here for a minute.”

He hums in response, tightening the hold he still has on her. “I’ll be right here.”

“Right here.” She echoes and then smiles again fleetingly. “That’s good.”


End file.
